IJRET: International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology

eISSN: 2319-1163 | pISSN: 2321-7308

A NOVEL RRW FRAMEWORK TO RESIST ACCIDENTAL ATTACKS

Farooq Shaik Mohammad1, M. Ramana Reddy2
1

Student, 2Professor, Department of E.C.E, RGM Autonomous of college Engineering & Technology, Andhra Pradesh,
India
faaruk.smd@gmail.com, ramana_2k5@rediffmail.com

Abstract
Robust reversible watermarking (RRW) methods are popular in multimedia for protecting copyright, while preserving intactness of
host images and providing robustness against unintentional attacks. Robust reversible watermarking (RRW) is used to protect the
copyrights and providing robustness against unintentional attacks. The past histogram rotation-based methods suffer from extremely
poor invisibility for watermarked images and limited robustness in extracting watermarks from the watermarked images destroyed by
unintentional attacks. This paper proposes a wavelet-domain statistical quantity histogram shifting and clustering (WSQH-SC)
method and Enhanced pixel-wise masking (EPWM). This method embeds a new watermark image and extraction procedures by
histogram shifting and clustering, which are important for improving robustness and reducing run-time complexity. It is possible
reversibility and invisibility. By using WSQH-SC methods reversibility, invisibility of watermarks can be achieved. The experimental
results show the comprehensive performance in terms of reversibility, robustness, invisibility, capacity and run-time complexity widely
applicable to different kinds of images.

Keywords: Integer wavelet transform, k-means clustering, masking, robust reversible watermarking (RRW)
----------------------------------------------------------------------***-----------------------------------------------------------------------1. INTRODUCTION
Reversible Watermarking (RW) methods [1] are used to
embed watermarks [2], e.g., secret information [3], into digital
media while preserving high intactness and good fidelity of
host media. It plays an important role in protecting copyright
and content of digital media for sensitive applications, e.g.,
medical and military images. The concept of reversible
watermark firstly appeared in the patent owned by Eastman
Kodak [4] Honsingex et al. [4] utilised a robust spatial
additive watermark combined with modulo additions to
achieve reversible data embedding. Goljan et al. [5] proposed
a two cycles flipping permutation to assign a watermarking bit
in each pixel group. Celik et al. [6] presented a high capacity,
reversible data-embedding algorithm with low distortion by
compressing quantization residues. Tian [7] presented a
reversible data embedding approach based on expanding the
pixel value difference between neighboring pixels, which will
not overflow or underflow after expansion. Thodi and
Rodrguez exploited the inherent correlation among the
neighboring pixels in an image region using a predictor. Xuan
et al. [8] embedded data into high-frequency coefficients of
integer wavelet transforms with the commanding technique,
and utilized histogram modification as a preprocessing step to
prevent overflow or underflow caused by the modification of
wavelet coefficients.
Reversible watermarking has found a huge surge of
experimentation in its domain in the past decade as the need of
recovering the original work image after extracting the

watermark arises in various applications such as the law

enforcement, medical and military image system, it is crucial
to restore the original image without any distortions [9]. In
traditional watermarking techniques, our main concern is to
embed and recover the watermark with minimum loss. The
quality of original work image we get after extraction is highly
degraded and not restorable. But in applications like law
enforcement, medical and military, in which superior quality
of image is needed, we cannot use these algorithms. In
medical images, some prerequisite information about the
patient is watermarked in it while transmitting and at reception
we need to have both, the original image and that information
is to be recovered loss without. This type of result is
achievable by making use of any reversible watermarking
algorithm out of a pool of algorithms [10].

2. PROPOSED METHOD
The following steps are used to embed the watermark into
image.
Decompose image using 5/3 IWT and divide the subband HL into n non overlapping blocks with the size
of h w.
Compute the mean of wavelet coefficients (MWC)
histogram of all of the blocks and obtain Sk.
Perform EPWM to compute the watermark strength
For k = 1to m do
7 Embed the kth watermark bit bk with Sw
k = Sk + bk ;
End for

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IJRET: International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology

eISSN: 2319-1163 | pISSN: 2321-7308

Reconstruct the watermarked image I with inverse

5/3 IWT.

The block diagram of proposed method as shown in fig.1

Fig.2. Image decomposition after a two level scaling for IWT

2.3 Means of Wavelet Coefficients (MWC) Histogram

Fig.1. Block diagram of proposed method

2.1 Property Inspired Pixel Adjustment (PIPA)

In RRW, how to handle both overflow and underflow of pixels
is important for reversibility. Xuan et al. [11] proposed a pixel
adjustment strategy to tackle this problem. Unfortunately, it
cannot be directly applied to wavelet domain because the
adjustment scale related to wavelet transform is unknown. As
a consequence, we develop PIPA to handle this problem.
Firstly, PIPA deeply exploits the intrinsic relationship between
wavelet coefficient and pixel changes. In particular, given a tbit host image I with the size of 2M 2N, the pixel adjustment
is performed by

I(i, j) - if I(i, j) 2t - 1 -
I' (i, j)

I(i, j) if I(i, j)

where I (i, j ) is the grayscale value of the pixel at (i, j ) in the

image I , I (i, j ) is the adjusted one (1 i 2M, 1 j 2N),
and > is the adjustment scale.

2.2 Integer Wavelet Transforms (IWT)

The wavelet transform transforms the image into a multi-scale
representation with both spatial and frequency characteristics
[12]. This allows for effective multi-scale image analysis with
lower computational cost. Using the IWT, the texture image is
decomposed into four sub images, as low-low, low-high, highlow and high-high sub-bands.

It is designed in high-pass sub-bands of wavelet

decomposition, to which HVS is less sensitive, leading to high
invisibility of watermarked images and it has almost a zeromean and Laplacian-like distribution based on the
experimental study of wavelet high-pass sub-bands from 300
test images.
Considering a given host image I , we first decompose I using
2 level IWT to obtain the sub-band and then divide HL into n
non overlapping blocks. Let S = (S1,..., Sk ,..., Sn ) be the
MWCs in the sub-band, then the MWC of the kth block, Sk ,is
defined as

Sk

h 2 w2
1
(i, j )
Pk
(h 2) X ( w 2) i 2 j 2

Where P (i, j) k represents the wavelet coefficient at (i, j ) in

the kth block

2.4 Embedded Pixel Wise Masking (EPWM)

It has been well acknowledged that a balance between
invisibility and robustness is important for robust
watermarking methods. Although many efforts have been
made to design lossless embedding models, little progress has
been made in this trade-off. Therefore, we develop EPWM to
tackle this problem by utilizing the JND thresholds of wavelet
coefficients to optimize watermark strength. To computed the
watermark strength is as shown below

i 1

j 1

i, j
M N JND

Where is a global parameter and M N is the sub-band size.

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IJRET: International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology

2.5 Embedded Procedure

eISSN: 2319-1163 | pISSN: 2321-7308

Decomposed Image

We use the obtained JND thresholds to control watermark

strength during the embedding process. To be specific, given
the MWC of the kth block of interest, i.e., Sk the watermark
embedding is given by
k = Sk + bk
Here k is the obtained MWC after the kth watermark bit bk
{0, 1} is embedded, is a factor defined as

s s
*

abs

s s

Fig 4 shows the decomposed camera man image

EPWM
3. QUALITY MEASUREMENT
PSNR is most commonly used to measure the quality of
reconstruction of lossy compression codecs. PSNR is most
easily defined via the mean squared error (MSE). Given a
noise-free mn monochrome image I and its noisy
approximation K, MSE is defined as:

MSE

1
mn

I i, j K i, j
m 1 n 1

i 0 j 0

Fig 5 shows EPWM camera man image

The PSNR is defined as:

MAX 2I

PSNR 10. log10

MSE

Watermarked Image

MAX I

20. log10

MSE
20. log10 MAX I 10 log10 MSE

4. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
MSE = 174.2140
PSNR = 25.7200

Original Image

Fig 3 shows the original camera man image

Fig 6 shows the watermarked image

CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we have developed a novel yet pragmatic
framework for RRW. It includes carefully designed PIPA,
SQH shifting and clustering, and EPWM, each of which
handles a specific problem in RRW. PIPA preprocesses host
images by adjusting the pixels into a reliable range for
satisfactory reversibility. SQH shifting and clustering
constructs new watermark embedding and extraction
processes for good robustness and low run-time complexity.
EPWM precisely estimates the local sensitivity of HVS and
adaptively optimizes the watermark strength for a trade-off

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between robustness and invisibility. In future, we will
combine the proposed framework with the local feature to
further improve robustness.

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eISSN: 2319-1163 | pISSN: 2321-7308

Andhra Pradesh. His areas of interest are research work in

image processing.
Dr. M.RAMANAREDDY, presently working
as professor in RGM College of Engineering
and Technology (Autonomous), Nandyal,
Kurnool(dist), AP, India. He was awarded a
doctorate for his work in Signal Processing in
2010.He has 16 years of teaching experience
and 8 years of industrial experience. He has
Professional Memberships in MISTE, MIE, and FIETE. He
guided 10 projects at master level.

BIOGRAPHIES
FAROOQ SHAIK MOHAMMAD received B.
Tech degree from SAFA Engineering College,
B.Thandarpadu, Kurnool (dist), Andhra
Pradesh in the year 2011 and currently pursing
M. Tech in Digital Systems & Computer
Electronics at RGM College of Engineering
and Technology, Nandyal, Kurnool (dist),

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